05/05/2024 We’re very happy to be testing a classic estate car this week, in the guise of the Volvo V60 PHEV. The V60 is a perfectly formed estate car, and as I’m a traditional motoring hack I firmly believe estate car = perfect family car. It has great road presence thanks to excellent proportions for the class.
Inside the five seat car you will enjoy a borderline smug sense of contentment. Owners will enjoy the V60’s build quality and higher than average materials. The seats are great and very supportive, as you’d expect from the Chinese owned Swedish brand, but its not all good news. The V60 is showing its age. It lacks the current crop of cutting edge design touches – You won’t find a mercedes-like widescreen dash-display or BYD/Tesla giant centre touch screen on the dash. Instead you will have what was the best tech from just a few years ago. Carplay and Android Auto are standard.
There is great space up front for occupants but less so for oddments – our test car lacked easy phone storage for example thanks to a relatively poorly designed centre console. The rear is adequate for three and perfect for two adults. The boot is huge but one demerit is the annoying tonneau/load cover that has to be put securly in place to avoid it partialy popping up and half obscuring the rear window. Under the bonnet is a perfectly adequate 2-litre petrol engine, in fact it can be quite swift when required but its nature is to potter along nicely. The enigne may burn petrol but thanks to its plug in hybrid system it can still avoid pitch forks being thrown at it.Â
The rechargebale battery at the heart of the PHEV system has a 19kWh capacity and Volvo quotes a maximum electric only driving range of 91km. Power goes to all four wheels via an eight-speed automatic gearbox. The system output of our T6 test car is 350hp with a whopping 659nm of torque – so you can haul the family and the house behind it too! 0-100km/h takes just 5.4 seconds. CO2 is a nominal 17g/km so Irish motor tax is €140 annually. The average WLTP fuel consumption firgure is 0.8L/100km.
On the road the V60 is unremarkable. It does everything you need it to do without drawing much attention to itself. The ride is firm-ish in a sophisticated way. The car goes where you point it and will even act like a rear wheel drive on looser surfaces. Pricing starts from €66,750 for ‘Plus’ grade and rises to €75,750 for the ’Ultra’. The Volvo V60 T6 is a car that that screams classic Volvo – it hits all the markers bar having the very latest tech onboard. Michael Sheridan
